Virtua Tennis 3 Hands-on

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We suit up for a rowdy Xbox Live match with SEGA's own VT players. New screens and impressions.

By Douglass C. Perry

Last week I turned down a perfectly good opportunity to play Virtua Tennis 3 online because of the week-long event called Game Developers Conference 07. This week, SEGA re-scheduled the online outing to play a little singles and doubles games online. Since my team is on vacation and at jury duty (that's all two of them), I was going to refuse again. I was like, "Well, I can't really play, I don't have time, I gotta write this feature and it has all this code, blah, blah, blah&#Array;" and I felt embarrassed. But here at IGN it's work first, play later (or work on playing games first, write about them later). Whatever, I was busy.

So I hemmed and hawed and that's when SEGA started talking trash. It was good-natured, mind you, but it was still trash talking. I just couldn't refuse. The kid gloves were thrown from here to China.

SEGA's Virtua Tennis 3, which ships to PS3 and Xbox 360 next week, is one of those games that's hard to drastically improve because it's already so good. They really nailed the controls, the feel, and the animations in the first game back in the arcades and on Dreamcast. Still, SEGA's development team has pushed for more mini-games, a greater single-player campaign, and now, for the first time, online play. One of the big differences between the Xbox 360 and the PS3 versions is that the Xbox 360 version supports online. That is, it's fully Xbox Live compatible with various modes of play, leaderboards, Achievements and GamerScore points. The PS3 isn't online. Simple as that.

Having played a healthy amount of the game in the arcades, on the Dreamcast, and finally, with the PS2 version (Virtua Tennis 2) called SEGA Sports Tennis, I felt confident about my ability to knock back any long-haired Federer impersonator who came my way. Of all the licensed players, I purposely didn't pick Federer because right now in pro tennis he is nearly unbeatable. Just in case you were wondering, there are 20 pros in Virtua Tennis 3. There's Lleyton Hewitt (counter strokes, "tenacious, powerful forehand"), Andy Roddick (big server, "fastest serve in the game"), Roger Federer (all rounder, "precise shots make him the best") and Maria Sharapova (hard hitter, "complete attacking game"). You'll also be able to choose Rafael Nadal, David Nalbandian, Sebastien Grosjean, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Tim Henman, James Blake, Mario Ancic, Taylor Dent, Gael Monfils, Tommy Haas, Lindsay Davenport, Daniela Hantuchova, Martina Hingis, Nicole Vaidisova, Amelie Mauresmo and Venus Williams (but not Serena Williams).

The online set-up is relatively easy. There's Ranked games, Player games (unranked), VT.TV (which is this neat new Spectator mode), and there are a handful of Leaderboards. For our simple set of games, I went basic. I accepted a friend invite, clicked on Xbox Live, picked unranked games and found the match. There were two of us at first and then we switched to doubles, which, it turned out, was way more fun than singles. The lobby system is also simple and clean. Not much to screw up there, actually. You pick a player (I picked Tommy Haas), you enter the lobby, which looks like a white outlined tennis court, and you pick sides. You press Start to indicate you're ready, and you're off.

We played two matches, the first being a complete smackdown. I told those fools not to mess with DCP. Nah, just kidding. I like to play the shark and surprise people. I never say I'm very good or bad because it's all relative to the people you're playing. In any case, my team -- IGN plus one of the SEGA PR people -- smoked the competition. It was like Mr. T smacking Rocky down in the first fight. The prediction was pain, and the prediction was right.

Virtua Tennis 3 played beautifully online for the first 45 minutes of our hour session. There was no lag, and the serves came through nicely, the players moved across the court with believable, life-like animations, and the ball was fast and un-interrupted by Internet-related business. While waiting for the server to deliver, we often ran around the court, dancing, jittering, and frolicking around. The cloth animations moved around separate from the bodies, so if you were Maria Sharapova and you did a little dance, your mini-skirt would swish back and forth. Something I always look for in a tennis game!

Using primary slices and power shots, I was also able to nail several slams down the throat of those no-good boasters of tennis loser-dom. And of course, somebody on their team actually picked Federer. What a loser! I'm actually in awe of the real-life player, having watching him several times just smoke the competition. But I didn't think it was fair to pick him while competing. It turns out that he's not all that much better in a multiplayer game. On the contrary, he's just a regular guy, so my assumption -- that SEGA boosted his stats to reflect his actual, real-life gameplay far above the rest -- was a little unfounded. In cases like this one, I'm happy to be wrong.

In the second match we switched teams. My new partner was a total all-around player, the kind of player that's great when playing single-player games, but not always that great to have as a partner. It's not a slight, but when coupled in teams, you have to let the other guy play. At first we ended up going for all the same balls, covering the court badly, and wondering what the hell was up with the other player. But as we progressed, we found a groove. He liked to play up close to the net, so I covered the backcourt. When he dove for a ball, I jogged to the other side of the court to cover the open space. We were up like 3-0 and it worked out for a good while, until I started laying it down thick. Honestly, if I hadn't talked all that trash, they never would have risen to the occasion. But I did, and they did too. The game went into a quadruple deuce. We finally lost in a valiant effort. The last 10 minutes or so of the game were affected by a little lag. The lag basically meant that I had to anticipate the ball's direction a little earlier than before, by a split second or so, and it occasionally made the game annoyingly harder.

Overall, Virtua Tennis 3's Xbox Live support is solid stuff. The game looks good online, it plays well, and the human-on-human competition is absolutely fantastic (when there is no lag), especially when you have smack-talking friends with whom to play.